A VMware guy’s perspective on containers

In the enterprise IT world, virtual machines are like Marvel superhero movies. They’re big, make a ton of money, it seems like they’re everywhere since the late 2000s, and while I can’t say they’re bad, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing about them.

In this tortured comparison, containers are Wes Anderson films. Everyone claims to love them, they get a lot of hype, but not a lot of people know why. I suppose this makes Docker Bill Murray?

In this hyped world, it takes a brave soul to acknowledge what they do not know. Mike Preston is one such soul. He was at Tech Field Day last month and saw Docker’s presentation about the latest in containers. As someone steeped in VMware, he’s heard a lot about them but was eager for details.

He discovered that a lot of the myths he’s heard about containers really aren’t true anymore. Perhaps the most notable is that they’re no longer exclusive to Linux. Windows Server 2016 now has native support for Docker images, and while Mike points out this isn’t a perfect solution, it certainly broadens the base.

As someone still trying to wrap my head around containers (and Wes Anderson films), it’s certainly a welcome perspective.

mwpreston.net comments:

Recently I attended Tech Field Day 12 in San Jose and was lucky enough to sit down with Docker for a couple of hours. Docker talked about a number of things including Containers as a Service, Security, Networking, Cloud and the recent integration points on Microsoft Server 2016. Now I’m not going to pretend here –

About Rich Stroffolino

Rich has been a tech enthusiast since he first used the speech simulator on a Magnavox Odyssey². Current areas of interest include ZFS, the false hopes of memristors, and the oral history of Transmeta.